That said I noticed a couple of what appear to be errors in your charts. You might want to look at these:

Crystal DiskMark (read) Should be at top of chart I believe.
and
Small file copy - Should be at top of chart and you have the C300 highlighted instead of the Vertex.

That said, thanks again for a great review.

Thanks for the catch. New testbed, new charts...new gremlins to chase down and stomp. :P

Quote:

Originally Posted by Galcobar

Have to point out the 25nm issue was not just a matter of drama, but one of a complete and utter failure by OCZ in the public relations and marketing.

It introduced 25nm into existing drives without telling anyone, in configurations which produced slower and smaller drives, for which people continued to pay full price -- when the trumpeted advantage of 25nm was a sharp price reduction. As a result, if you got a 25nm drive that wasn't labelled as such, you received a weak cousin of the ones based on 34nm NAND. That was the reality, which OCZ did not address.

The effect is that the transition to 25nm NAND wasn't just about durability, but speed and capacity. Hell, even after the configurations were switched back to the same basic design, OCZ staff have acknowledged that drives based on 25nm NAND are 15-30% slower than those based on 34nm NAND.

The way OCZ handled things was basically the same way they (and everyone else) handled the transition from 5x to 3x NM nand....they didnt mention the change over except in passing. Unfortunately, this time around it bit them in the arse. Thanks in no small part to the difference in capacities. People may or may notice a performance hit...but they sure as hell will notice the drive is NOT the capacity it is sold as! This is where the issue started and unfortunately, OCZ was thrown under the bus by the other companies. It could have happened to any of the others but OCZ "ran out" of the 34 faster than anyone else (as they sell more than anyone else) and thus took the brunt of the justifiably ticked off consumers.

Sadly, once people were riled up over the lowered capacity, companies came forward and stated this capacity reduction was to help offset the reduced lifespan of the 25nm. This in turn created a feeding frenzy panic over "will the drive die an early death" as the water had already been chummed and anything any mfg'er said was taken with a lot of skepticism. I admit that I too was unsure until I took a detailed look at things and reassured myself. However, this is not the first gen SF drives we are talking about. This was not a review on the Vertex 2. It is on the Vertex 3. I did not want to get into the previous models problems with 25nm any more than I needed to as they are different drives.

The performance issue with 25nm and next gen drives such as the Vertex 3 is a non-issue. Look at the numbers. They speak for themselves. The capcity issue is also a non starter as this model has the same OP as the original 240GB extended drives (though much lower than the true orginal 100GB/200GB models which I loved so much). This leaves only the lifespan as a hanging issue. This is why it was addressed.

Honestly, hindsight is 20/20 but it was an all round PRdisaster and it should have been handled differently. People have asked me about this issue and the new SF drives and that is a damn shame. At some point I will probably do a more in depth look at the 25nm debate (after much discussion a severely curtailed version was used for this review which had almost none of the math included) in which I go into greater detail why it is a non-issue for the 240's and how a user can further mitigate this "issue" if they are feeling less than sure about their drive. That however is for another day. I hope that answers your concerns on why we only centered in on the lifespan issue of 25nm NAND.

Quote:

Originally Posted by YukonTrooper

Will you be doing a review of the performance-castrated 120GB version, considering that's a more common size for the mainstream?

To be honest, no idea. I dont even know if they are sampling the smaller ones at this time. Much like it took longer for us to look at the 60s, 40 and 90s it may happen at some point; but for right now this gen's "sweet spot" is the 240 model. I will request it though and see what we can do.

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